Clamor Ergo Cervi
by Penhales
Summary: Abigail develops some complex relationships.


It didn't occur to her that she was being irrational until Dr. Bloom was carrying her bag in one of her hands and holding an arm across her shoulder as they walked out together. It wasn't Dr. Bloom and Will Graham she had wanted to be leaving with in the first place, but it was how things had to be. Will had arranged some way of taking her into his house when she was ready to leave the hospital, insisting that it was the safest place for her to be, but she was not so sure.

She always had the feeling of the need to tiptoe around Will, as if he were constantly standing on rotting floorboards and one misstep on her part would send them both crashing through the surface and into the dead earth. He was just as delicate as she, and seemed to feel some sort of bond to her because of it, though she seemed to be always moving further from him, more and more obstacles coming between any hope of a paternal friendship that he may have wanted. This, however, did not stop him from being the first person besides Dr. Bloom to offer Abigail lodging until she could get housing elsewhere, and Abigail was certainly not about to put herself under Dr. Bloom's care, and therefore even closer to the magnifying glass.

So there he was, staring unflinchingly straight ahead through the windshield in the passenger seat of Dr. Bloom's car. The book he had brought to read was lying untouched on his lap, and he hadn't even discarded his jacket, though the spring weather had warmed the outside significantly since the morning.

Abigail found herself silently wishing that she were invisible as they got into the car with Will and held an awkward silence all the way to his house. He lived quite far out from the hospital, and certainly far out from Dr. Bloom's psychiatry practice, which partially relieved her and partially worried her about how easy it would be to get away from time to time, when she needed to. She inwardly kicked herself for not telling Hannibal where she was going to be after Dr. Bloom gave her clearance to leave the hospital. It was one of the only things she could focus on in the deafening silence of Dr. Bloom's car as it passed acres of woods crowded around the long, stretching asphalt.

There was a dull sense of relief when they did finally reach his home on the outskirts of the city, little and wooden, surrounded by trees and ominous, unplanted fields. She wondered where Will got the money for the house or if he'd inherited it from some family member, now long gone, like all of hers. Watching his profile, soft against the cold, grey Wolftrap skyline as they all exited the car; Abigail felt the weight in her chest ease a little. Will Graham was the least threatening person in her life, if she had to choose one, with his stubble and messy brown curls, though he was still so close to Garret Jacob Hobbs. Something in the earthen tones and plaids he wore made her think of her father every time she saw him, and whenever he'd look at her with open, puppy eyes, she felt her skin crawl with the memory of Garret Hobbs doing the same. Even still, Will was safe. Will couldn't make her do anything she didn't want to.

He held the door open for her as she carried her suitcase inside. There wasn't really enough in it to make it heavy by any stretch of the imagination, just the clothes and two books that Hannibal and Dr. Bloom had brought her, but Will held the door for her anyway, offering an innocent smile. She bristled a little when he touched her back after she passed over the threshold, but the appearance of his dogs made her feel more at ease.

"Please, make yourself at home, Abigail."

She sat down on the floor to put herself on an even level with the dogs, reaching for the smooth head of a smaller one while the bigger dogs nudged her shoulders with their noses. She smiled more at the animals, but dared a glance at him long enough to respond to his kind words,

"Thank you."

He watched her from the doorway a minute more before Dr. Bloom took him outside by the arm, presumably so they could discuss the terms of her stay. Abigail wasn't foolish enough to believe that Dr. Bloom trusted the set up entirely, but she knew that Dr. Bloom wasn't about to play Abigail's personal bad guy, either. She felt a small twinge of guilt because she knew that the older woman was only trying to help, but in that same respect, so was Freddie Lounds, and she hadn't proved useful yet in the least. More of a nuisance than anything else, just as Hannibal had warned her, and Dr. Bloom, more of a surrogate aunt that Abigail didn't particularly want or feel like she needed.

Abigail craned her neck to look out through Will's front window and tried to catch a glimpse of his conversation with her psychiatrist. It was obvious how much he liked her, leaning slightly forward towards her every time they talked, and she liked him, based on her smile and earnest expression. Suddenly feeling as if she were intruding on something private, Abigail turned her attention back to the dogs. Most of them were collarless and two or three bore signs of past physical abuse or neglect from previous owners, but they all looked, for the most part, happy and well kept. One, his favorite if she remembered correctly, stood by the door waiting for him to come back into the room, totally unfazed by the stranger in his house.

She stood out of politeness when Will came back into the house, warm glow in his sullen cheeks.

"I see you've met the dogs."

"Do they have names?"

"Winston was by the door. These two are Ruby and Sam, that's Dakota, Teddy, and Sadie, and this one is Milo."

Abigail had been petting the two smallest, Teddy, a sandy thing with a jutting snout, and Ruby, brown and white, smooth-coated. They showed far less interest in her now that Will had come inside. She may as well have been a discarded squeaky toy.

"Do you mind if I, uh, take a look around?"

"Of course. In fact, let me take you to your room."

Winston followed closely at Will's heels, still a little unsure of Abigail's presence, though the other dogs seemed appeased. Will himself was distracted with the task at hand, trying to suppress the other thoughts that snaked their way through his skull on a regular basis, and so he didn't speak to her as they shuffled through the house. It was small and a little on the cramped side for more than one person to be trying to live in it, but it expanded out towards the back into a kitchen, study, and "storage room", as Will called it.

He led her up a fairly broad staircase connected to the downstairs hallway, Winston following all the way. She pursed her lips, trying to think of ways to get around the dogs when she left the house. Will surely couldn't expect her to spend every minute of her time trapped in his house with him.

"Here it is. It's a little small, but it's only made to accommodate one, anyway."

"Is that your room next door?"

"Yes, and at the end of the hall, there's a bathroom. W-we'll have to share, unless you want to use the one downstairs."

The wood panels on the floor barely creaked at all, and she smiled to herself at the dog toy lying in the middle of the large, cable knit rug spread across the floorboards. The bed was a cozy twin, pushed up against the wall, the way she liked it to be if she had to sleep alone. Will had really done her a great service by offering the space, but Abigail was still too unsure of him to be tripping over her gratitude.

"Thanks. It's really nice."

Trying to mask his pleasant surprise, Will let the corners of his mouth slide upwards for only a second or two before slipping back into straight face,

"Well, I'll let you settle in."

He stood by the door, watching her put her suitcase down on the bed to start unpacking and she turned and smiled shyly to call him out on his awkwardness. Will shook himself out of his distracted state and mumbled something about needing to feed the dogs before leaving Abigail to herself.

She sat down on the bed beside her case and considered, carefully, her options. Will was generally unthreatening and just far enough away from people to offer her some relief from too much social interaction, but he hadn't been plan A. The idea for her to leave the hospital wasn't discussed with the doctors for the purpose of bringing her to Will Graham's, or even Alana Bloom's, but rather Hannibal's home. He'd brought up the idea with her shortly after Nick Boyle was found, and he wouldn't be pleased to find out that she wouldn't be under his immediate supervision. She shivered, the cold, January air creeping under the closed window sill. She and Will would be prisoners. It was simply unwise for the two of them to be co-habiting.

Abigail felt a sinking feeling in her stomach out of pure resignation as she stood to sort out her bag. Hannibal would have to find out, if he didn't know already, and she and Will would face whatever came next.  
-

Shortly after nightfall, Will knocked softly on Abigail's door. She'd been sleeping, grabbing what few hours she could before the nightmares would start sinking their teeth into her.

"Come in."

She mumbled sleepily, still curled in a ball on the mattress. Will meekly peeked through the door in an attempt to keep from violating her personal space.

"Oh, you were sleeping, I'm sorry."

"No, no, wouldn't have lasted long, 'nyway."

Abigail sat up and ran a hand through her hair in an attempt to straighten it a little. Through a yawn she asked,

"What's up?"

"It just got really quiet; I wanted to check in on you. Did you want anything to eat?"

The last thing she'd eaten was at Hannibal's house a day before, and she'd only been able to manage a bite of that. He'd held her and stroked her hair with smooth hands and the roughened tips of his fingers, sensuous mouth pressing a kiss on her forehead when he said goodbye. Her stomach clenched and an overwhelming sense of nausea overtook her.

"No, thanks, I'm not hungry."

"Well…I'm right down the hall if you need me, okay?"

She nodded, now propped up against the headboard of her new bed.

"Oh, and Dr. Lecter called a little while ago. He wants you to come with me to my appointment on Wednesday, are you going to be up for that?"

Abigail forced a lazy smile, though she had been jarred completely awake by Will's words.

"Yeah."

"Goodnight, Abigail."

"Goodnight."

She'd completely inhaled her Wednesday morning coffee by the time they reached Hannibal's office and she was a jittery mess. Will certainly didn't help, with his own nervousness about his appointment. She didn't expect him to understand that he was still safe, and for Will, the wolf was very much at the door. The leaves had fallen off of all of the trees and crunched loudly beneath Abigail's boots as she trailed behind Will to the main doors of Hannibal's office. The bare arms of the trees twisted into the sky above them, and Abigail wished for an absent-minded moment that she could stay outside and climb the trees like she had as a kid. There was something safely risky about being a child hanging from tree limbs like a monkey that she missed with every bone in her body. Will touched her arm gently and brought her back to reality, holding the heavy door open for her.

Quietly tiptoeing in, they found the waiting room blessedly empty. Abigail had had the misfortune of encountering one of Hannibal's more annoying patients whilst trying to make her way up to the office's mezzanine library. She eventually made some excuse about being a cleaning girl and slipped away, but the sticky, desperate sort of way the corpulent man spoke to her still bothered her long after it had happened. He'd mentioned his name, though she couldn't recall it, and asked strange questions about Hannibal and his living habits. Needless to say, she didn't even feel comfortable crafting answers. Sitting in the same armchair the detestable patient had occupied, Will's face was halfheartedly buried in a copy of Baltimore STYLE, scanning with feigned interest an article on savvy shopping. Abigail wrinkled her nose at it. Undoubtedly, Hannibal never so much as glanced at the magazines he left out for his patients. He hardly had time to sit down and pay conscious attention to whatever nonsense was printed in the stale pages of the two and three year old catalogues he left out.

Abigail heard footsteps approaching the office door and the silhouette of the man himself appeared behind the glass window in the mahogany. She felt her heart beating so hard against her ribcage that she was certain Hannibal could hear it from behind the thick wood. Will must have also been made very nervous by his appearance because he cast aside the magazine the second the knob turned. Abigail could only beg her heart to still because she knew all too well that Hannibal could smell anxiety and fear, and she'd rather he focus on the smell of it all over Will than the smell of it all over her.

"Hello, Will. Abigail."

She only lifted the corners of her mouth a little bit in acknowledgement of the greeting, but Will stood and flexed his hands a few times, smiling guardedly in response.

"Do you mind waiting through Will's session, Abigail?"

He did not take his eyes off of his next patient for even a second to offer her the query.

"Nope."

She let the final consonant of the word make a popping noise that she knew would both irritate and amuse him, but ultimately just attract his attention for a moment. He spared her a glance and a small smile that mirrored the one she'd just given his welcome, which was the highest flattery Hannibal could give her without using his words, but it was rude to keep his attention away from his target for too long. Abigail took Will's magazine from where he'd left it on the couch and pretended to be very interested in a random page selected from the middle. He gratefully took the cue as an indicator that he could usher Will into the office and begin his verbal brain dissection.

Abigail was very careful with Hannibal, eager to capture his attention, but not to distract him from important tasks. He was very task-driven and would certainly let her know his anger at her interference, as he'd once proven by not speaking with her at all for three days and refusing to acknowledge her existence if others were present. He was very conscious to remind her who held the upper hand often, and was not afraid to punish her. She dropped the magazine and tried to recall how she'd gotten into the mezzanine without his noticing until later on. She couldn't exactly go in now, either Hannibal or Will would see her coming in, but she could find the hidden door and listen behind it for a while. Hannibal would probably be able to smell her on the doorframe from her palm sweat seeping into the unfinished wood, but if she didn't touch anything, she could almost get away with it for a while.

Still, she craved the touch of another human being, and it had been difficult enough the first time around when Hannibal deprived her of any physical contact, it couldn't possibly be worth giving up just to hear about Will's twisted dreams. She could get Will to tell her that all on her own. Her mind was still buzzing from a mix of the caffeine and the excitement of seeing her intimate friend again, but she knew that teasing Will into talking about his deluded subconscious could be an easily achieved feat. It could help Hannibal clear both of their names; a sheep for the slaughter. Abigail could get deeper than Hannibal ever would just from bonding to Will during her time trapped at his house, and so she set herself on it.

She took up the magazine again, turning a few pages past where she'd had it before Will's session. She could at least pretend she hadn't been scheming the entire time.  
Hannibal appeared at the door again, followed closely by a very tired looking Will Graham. He pointed at the couch and whispered something in Will's ear, eyes gushing concern, but a gently smiling mouth. Abigail took umbrage at his hand on Will's shoulder, knowing full well why it was there. She was the one in trouble.

After Will was settled on the couch, Hannibal took Abigail by the elbow and nearly pushed her into the office. Leant against the door for a moment, Hannibal shut his eyes as if collecting his thoughts. In a very quiet voice he murmured,

"Abigail, what were my specific instructions?"

"Not to take the first offer I'm given."

"And what did you do?"

"Well, I definitely tried not to take it."

He pursed his lips and sucked on his teeth, standing independently of the door to draw himself up to full height, like a bird of prey.

"What were my specific words?"

"Not to take it."

"Correct. And you…?"

"Tried not to take it, but Dr. Bloom-"

"-There's no need to involve others. This is about you and your choices."

Hannibal, who had come directly in front of her so she had to look up at him, placed a cold, smooth hand on the back of her neck.

"Come, take a seat."

Using his hand to guide her like a mother holding onto her unruly child, he walked her over to the plush chair Will had most recently occupied. She could tell by the armrests, still warm from his tight grip because Will was like a human radiator, leaving heat signatures on everything he touched. Hannibal pressed her down into it, resting his hands on her shoulders, thumbs and forefingers close to her throat.

"Now, you accepted Will's invitation to house you for a while. Why don't you tell me about that?"

He was purring into her ear, but it was the agitated purr of an incensed jungle cat, very nearly a low growl.

"My choices were between only him and Dr. Bloom. If you had even been a choice, I would have taken that in an instant."

"They weren't going to give my name as a choice until you rejected the first choices, Abigail."

She let a silence fall between them, unsure of how to respond. He hadn't mentioned to her before that the hospital could have been more willing to let her go with Will Graham than another doctor.

"-but why didn't Dr. Bloom mention you as a first choice?"

"Why not, indeed? Consider it."

"She wasn't thinking about it?"

Hannibal released her shoulders and paced around her chair to take his place opposite her.

"…she was thinking about Will?"

"How does her sentiment for Will make you feel, Abigail?"

She narrowed her eyes and crossed her legs slowly.

"How does it make you feel?"

He indulged her impudence with a smile and folded his hands in his lap.

"I am not in the mood to play games with you right now. Answer me honestly."

"You know, I was thinking about Will while he was in here."

She continued to dodge the question. She felt he hadn't earned an answer.

"I was thinking about his nightmares and how I'm a bit stuck with him for a while in the bedroom next door…"

"I'm listening."

"Well, you can just talk to Will forever and never hear about every single dream before the events of the day have tainted the small details. I'm going to be staying with him for a while and he clearly feels something for me, so I-"

"No, Abigail."

"But-"

"I said no. I will not allow you dive headfirst into Will's subconscious. It is too dangerous."

She sighed heavily and drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair; a habit of hers that Hannibal detested. He rose from his seat and closed the distance between them, kneeling down in front of her and pressing his hand down over her mischievous fingers. Hannibal held the fingers tightly together in a crushing grip, studying the fear evident on her face up close.

"I urge you to have some patience and refrain from your usual defiance."

He brought her hand to his mouth, his lips not reaching to kiss, just resting against callouses on her fingers. The breaths exhaled through his nose reminded her of a time she had reached out to pet a family friend's large dog and been bitten, and his eyes reflected the same dangerous light. She swallowed and her throat closed in a series of sinewy clicks that gave away her nervousness even more than her face already did. Hannibal, much like a wild animal, could be tamed, but only with obedience on the part of his prey. The more she rebelled against him, the more difficult it would be for him to have some mercy on her when she needed it later. Even still, she disliked his curiosity about Alana Bloom.

"Are you sleeping with her?"

Hannibal's mask slipped for a millisecond, but Abigail couldn't catch the expression he'd allowed through.

"That is hardly pertinent to this conversation, Abigail."

"I think it is, actually."

He sighed and made the decision to retake his place in the chair across from her. Intimidation wasn't working this time, as it had before.

"Yes."

Abigail looked down at the floor and nodded, a forced smile coloring the pallor of her cheeks. He'd answered her honestly, even if it wasn't what she wanted to hear.

"I think she's nosy, if you must know. I think Alana Bloom likes to dabble in other peoples' lives because it makes her feel good about herself. She's done something bad, somewhere in her life and, to make up for it, she devotes herself to others now. She tries to be strong at all times, but occasionally, she fails. And you can tell when she does."

She stood then, eager to end the uncomfortable dialogue Hannibal had chosen to open with her and to make him feel less settled.

"Is time up yet? I don't want to keep Will waiting."

Hannibal did not stand and join her.

"You still have ten minutes on the clock. It would be a shame to waste it by ending early."

Abigail walked, hands behind her back in an unthreatening gesture, around his office to his desk. He had sketches scattered across its mostly very tidy top, clearly left out for someone to find. One was of a small cottage by a line of trees and another, of a paper crane by a candle. Some were anatomical drawings scattered across one sheet of paper, one even had her own face on it, and one close by it, the face of a small, snub-nosed girl. She lifted the portrait of the little girl, helpfully labeled "Mischa" and noted how carefully and lovingly the child had been portrayed. This was someone important, but she lost time in musing over it when Hannibal took it from her, abruptly.

"It is not finished."

Aware of how close he was pressing to her, Abigail leaned in slightly. Hannibal was still trying to be imposingly tall and she craned her neck to meet his eyes, but she did so as fearlessly as she could.

"It's beautiful."

He exhaled and for a pure moment, he cradled her head in his hands before tangling them in the lank smoothness of her hair. She cautiously leaned in closer; a hand splayed on his chest, but went no further than brushing her nose against his. Hannibal was beginning to bristle at her brashness. Knowing she was near overstepping her bounds, Abigail broke from him and without looking back, exited through the waiting room door.

"You've still got five minutes left."

"I was done, so he let me go early."

Will wore a puzzled expression as they walked back out to the car, but he didn't question her because she hadn't invited it. Abigail appreciated his silence.

"Can I buy you lunch while we're in town?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Will."

Needless to say, she didn't mention Alana Bloom.


End file.
